This paper studies the secular increase in U.S. household debt and its relation to growing income inequality and … financial fragility. We exploit a new household-level dataset that covers the joint distributions of debt, income, and wealth in … increase in U.S. household debt between the 1970s and 2007. The resulting debt increase made balance sheets more sensitive to …

This paper examines whether relative income and income inequality within reference groups affect household consumption …. Using the explanations of consumption behavior based on Dusenberry's relative income hypothesis, we test if household … consumption levels in Turkey are affected by the household's relative position and inequality in the reference group between 2005 …

This paper studies the secular increase in U.S. household debt and its relation to growing income inequality and … financial fragility. We exploit a new household-level dataset that covers the joint distributions of debt, income, and wealth in … increase in U.S. household debt between the 1970s and 2007. The resulting debt increase made balance sheets more sensitive to …

across states shows that the rise in top income shares can explain almost all of the accumulation of household debt held as a … financial asset by the household sector. Since the Great Recession, the saving glut of the rich has been financing government …